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office openings

Chetan Nagendra, former Bangalore partner of AZB & Partners, has joined Big 4 consultancy E&Y best friend law firm PDS Legal as a partner, to open up its Bangalore office, according to sources with knowledge of the move.

NLU Jodhpur 2008 alumnus Anand Varma and his father Tarun Varma’s Delhi-based litigation start-up APT Legal has now opened offices in Mumbai, Allahabad and Jaipur, with more office openings in the offing.

Unlike many other large firms that have struggled to find good business in Hyderabad - Trilegal closed its office in January and Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas only has a skeleton presence remaining there, Tatva has doubled down on the state following the Andhra Pradesh-Telangana bifurcation.

Former K Law Mumbai partner Praveen Raju’s two year old Bangalore start-up Spice Route Legal, which he started up with former Kochhar & Co Singapore partner Mathew Chacko, has opened an office in Kochi.

Six-year old Jaipur-based firm Capstone Legal, that was started up by NLSIU Bangalore 2012 alumnus Ashish K Singh fresh out of law school with his brother Vagish K Singh, who was in his fourth year at NLSIU at the time, has opened its second office, expanding to Ahmedabad.

J Sagar Associates (JSA) has opened an office in the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) special economic zone (SEZ), after SEZ rules had recently seen a liberalisation that allows legal services providers to operate from there.

ANM Global, which had been set up in 2009 by Nidish Mehrotra and Anuj Gupta, has hired Citi vice president Binay Kumar Mishra as a senior partner to head the firm’s banking and finance practice from Mumbai.

Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas has scooped Cognizant Technology Solutions India & APAC region general counsel (GC) Anand Bhushan to set and head up its new Chennai office after he fully leaves a little later this month, according to three authoritative sources.

Umesh Khaitan’s newly rebranded firm Khaitan & Khaitan has moved away from its top focus – the project finance practice, to focus on corporate governance, private equity and venture capital and environment law. It has also moved to a much bigger office.